Rebellion

'During the first lockdown,' S.D. told me when we spoke via the wireless telegraph yesterday, 'it was completely wrong that we weren't allowed to take communion to people who needed it. My friend Fr Clarke went out several times anyway and concealed his home-communion kit under a pile of toilet rolls on the back seat of the car in case the police stopped him'. The naughtiest things I did during that initial period when we were not supposed even to go into church buildings were a) to say to Rick our verger that if his state-permitted daily exercise happened to take him in the direction of the church, and he happened to have his keys with him, it could very well be the case that he might find himself going in and doing some polishing or something, and b) we hand-delivered our newsletters and printed services to parishioners who weren't online in any way when the instruction from Lambeth Palace was that such literature should only be sent through the post. In fact sometimes we even spoke to people on the doorstep. That first week in March when public worship was suspended, when I was self-isolating but before the lockdown actually began, Marion the curate did the delivery and made a point of speaking to everyone on the list. It took her hours. She's always been more conscientious than me.

Back then of course we didn't know much about COVID and some of the concerns that the Church got very agitated about seem over-the-top now. As the above shows, I felt many were exaggerated even then: I couldn't see what terrible risk was run by standing outside well away from someone and asking them whether they were OK. Nevertheless, Government - as opposed to the Archbishop of Canterbury - has the unenviable task of coming up with overall guidelines as to what we should and should not do. This is mostly couched in terms of balancing the demands of public health and the economy, but there is also the different attitudes of the public to consider. Some people are more cautious than others: one person's carefulness is another's over-anxiety, and one's reasonable confidence is another's recklessness. Government has to negotiate and promote common ways of behaving which most people will accept most of the time, together with what it knows about considerations of health and economics. Government is a central part of our social conversation.

The rogue baptism staged by London pastor Regan King the other day was almost certainly not expected actually to go ahead, which is why he told everybody about it beforehand: if you really want to do something illicit, you don't publicise it. Even Extinction Rebellion steer clear of that. However much I sympathise, I won't be doing the same. But the socially-distanced, pared-down, tightly-controlled spoken mass we got used to at Swanvale Halt before the second closure is as safe as any activity a group of people could engage in indoors, and if that isn't allowed again after December 2nd it will be a harsh choice indeed.